IBMT Magazine www.international-brigades.org.uk Issue 44 / 1-2017 INTERNATIONAL BRIGADE MEMORIALTRUST Allth eway to Jarama ClemBeckettplaywows audiencesandcritics LIBE RTY’S VOLUNTEERS THETIMELESSLEGACYOFTHESPANISHCIVILWAR Saturda y18March2017attheManchesterConferenceCentre,78SackvilleSt,ManchesterM13BB www.manchesterconferencecentre.co.uk/01619558000 10.30am Registration oftheBritonswhoFoughtinthe CivilWar:anechothroughthe 11am Welcomeandintroduction: SpanishCivilWar’andIBMTChair) decades–talkbyGilesTremlett, ProfessorPeterCrome 12pm Lunch/Exhibitions/Stalls journalistandauthorof‘Ghostsof Spain:TravelsthroughSpainand 11.15am Internationalvolunteers: 1.30pm TributetoDavidLeachby itsSilentPast’ whotheywereandwhythey ManusO’Riordan(IBMTIreland foughtfascisminSpain–talkbyDr Secretary)followedbyDavid’sfilm 3.30pm SongsfromtheSpanish RichardBaxell(authorof‘Unlikely ‘VoicesfromtheMountain’ CivilWarperformedbyMikeWild Warriors:TheExtraordinaryStory 2.30pm ThelegacyoftheSpanish 4pm Close

G £15:buffetandentrance(payment Blackburn,LancsBB27AT01254 InternationalBrigade inadvanceby28February2017) 51302/[email protected] G £10:entranceonly(paymenton G Forfurtherinformation: MemorialTrust2017 theday) DoloresLong01612262013/ G PaymenttoIBMTbycheque/ [email protected] 2017LenCromeMemorialConference PayPal/banktransferto:Charles HilaryJones01625527540/ www.international-brigades.org.uk Jepson,Aysgaard,BeardwoodBrow, [email protected] l l e b p m a C -

IBMT MAGAZINE n a y R

Issueno.44 e r i h

1-2017 p p a S

Coverpicture DavidHeywoodis ClemBeckettin theplay‘Dare DevilRidesto Jarama’,currently ontourinBritain.Seepages10-11formore abouttheplayandcheckthenoticeonthe backcoverfor2017tourdates. 5 FarewelltoStanHilton,thelastBritish InternationalBrigadevolunteer 7 MichaelDHiggins,PresidentofIreland, deliveredaperceptiveaddresstotheIBMT’s 2016AnnualGeneralMeeting 12 Secretarialnotes,includingawelcometo thenewExecutiveCommittee NEW HOME FOR PLAQUE: EmilyThornberryMP Doyle,JackJones,SamLesserandAlanMenaiWilliams. 14 Murdermysterysolved (centre),theShadowForeignSecretary,atthe Two years later it was cut into three pieces in an act of heEbroplaqueinits vandalism perpetrated bySpanish neo-fascists. 16 Letters unveilingoftheoriginalBattleoft newlocationinthememorialgardenoftheMarx The plaque inSpain has since been replaced. But 17 Profile:QuakernurseMaryElmes MemorialLibraryinLondon.Picturedwithherare the original was brought to Britain by the IBMT, to be IBMTSecretaryJimJump(left)andIBMT President unveiled, for a second time, on 30 October 2016, 19 Italiananti-fascists:theLondonlink MarleneSidaway. marking the 80th anniversary of the formation of the the IBMT on Hill 705 International Brigades. 20 SpanishRepublicansintheSecond The plaque, first installed by on the Ebro battlefield, names the 90 members of the Speaking at the event, EmilyThornberry praised WorldWar British Battalion killed in fighting from July to the internationalism of the volunteers who went to 22 HungariansintheInternationalBrigades September 1938. It was unveiled in May 2005 in the Spain.They had shown that British people’s concerns presence of International Brigade veterans Bob did not ‘end at the WhiteCliffs of Dover’. 23 Books,includinganewstudyoftheUS responsetothewarinSpain,plusafamily history-inspirednovelwhichisbeing publishedtocoincidewiththisyear’s80th anniversaryofthebombingofGuernica

TheIBMTMagazine (formerlytheIBMT Newsletter )ispublishedthreetimesayear andissentfreetoallmembers.Backnumbers canbedownloadedfromtheIBMTwebsiteon [www.international-brigades.org.uk / newsletter.htm].Allcontentisthe copyright©oftheIBMTandcredited contributorsandcannotbereproduced withoutwrittenpermission. Editor JimJump 37aClerkenwellGreen,LondonEC1R0DU 02072538748 [email protected]

InternationalBrigadeMemorialTrust www.international-brigades.org.uk Registeredcharityno.1094928

FLAGGED UP: Labour leader JeremyCorbyn MP (centre) joins IBMT IrelandSecretary (right) andTower Hamlets Mayor John Biggs in holding aSpanish Republican flag dedicated to Irish International Brigaders at the 80th anniversary commemoration of the Battle ofCableStreet in London’s East End on 9 October 2016. CableStreet has been called ‘the road toSpain’ because many of the protesters who stopped the police from clearing a wayfor a march byfascist Blackshirts in what was then the heart of London’s Jewish community went on to join the International Brigades.This photo ofCorbyn with the flag was widely disseminated on social media. Retweeting the image, Pablo Iglesias, leader ofSpan’s Podemos party, said: ‘Thankyou JeremyCorbyn for paying tribute to the heroes and heroines who came from Britain to defend democracy in our country.’ I ( w B M v v m A a m r B i t y d p m

s w I s t e

a

n

n

h

a

N h

e

i

c e

h

x

i

r m

a

r

M

i

h

s

b

o

o

o

a

s

t

t

o e

e r

i t

n

a

P i

o

r

K

h e

i

g

e

e

i

l

t

r

s

t

i o

e

f M

c

e

r t

n

a

c 1

w e

a

n

i

h a

r

a

e

a

e

e

r

t

-

e

v

r

n

t x

h

9

n r

i s

r

a

o

r s

e

i

d

r

n

n

o

o

e

V

u l

n

i

E

c

i

g

c

3

l

a

o

n

l

s

s

w

i

r

c

t

e

t

,

i

a

h

n

g

d

a

u M

s a

X w

,

8

h

n

t

h

o

n

a

l

s

t

o z

h

i

i i

,

.

f

t

i

e

m

a

o

g a

r

I n

e

v a a

o v

.

q

e

o

B

s

f

A

J

o

t

f

C

b

e n o

e

r

H

u s ’

n

h x

u

u g

o h

t

t

a

u

f

f

,

w

s

h o

f O

r v

)

a

a

i

t

a

o e

i

f

e

e

g

t

e

t

s

m

,

s

c

e n

S

o

u

h

t

t

e

n

o

‘

l

e

d

r

h

i

:

c

o

a

i

t

A

h

l

G

r

l

c

a

i

t

B

e

e

t

f

, o

M n

e

o

S

t

u

K

z b

c

t e

y

t

C a

n

o

a

S

e

b

r

-

t

o

i

e I

p

h

S

a n

o

a

a

.

r

l

e

i

i

n

w

n

o

s

t

p

o

t

g

,

n

t

g

a

r

e

f

r

n t

p

‘

s

a

x

o

k

d

t

y

e

r

a

G

t

e

l

S

r

r

a t

e

n

e a d

n i

w

n

h

J

o

i r

b

h

L

e

n

e

M

c l

p

o d o

u

t

i

r

i i

o

d

a

e

e

u

o

s

r y

a e

r e

t n

i

i

n

a o

e

a

n

E

s e n

s

s

w

h

e

p

a

S

r

r

a

l

,

C

a

n

d

E r

n

t

s

h

x

a

e

f

s

o

h

s

t

t

M

p

k

B

C

t

i

b o

i b

p A

r

i

s

d

a

M

t

i .

s

M

f R

e

c

o

a a

o

i

f

a

r

y

o

y

a t

u

e

k

I

v h

t

o

o

h

e

w

n

m

B

r

t

i e

h

w

n

M

ñ

e h

x

g

f

i

i

g

c

p

i

i

n

u a

o

w l

a

r

a

i

x

i a

o

e

u

s

s

e

r

u

i c

e

L

c

u

W

r

r

g

n s

i d

i

l

t

l

a

h

s

l

s o e z

a

a

e

c

x

t

,

b

i

a

o

i

a

p

s

t

e

a

s t

o

a

w

t

l t

i

w

C

k

l

.

n

u

c

v

i

s

r a

r

h

i

d

1

C

n

L

e

i

a

,

c

a

h a

i

d

a

r

6

t

e

d

i

i

p

o

a

r

t

n

’

y

e

i

k

n

t

-

d

,

e

e

n n

t

i

y

r

e

t

d

n

.

-

o

s

e

’

o

a

s

P v o u d v

N N N I

e

o

f

B

n ’

A

A

e e

t

t

l

O

v

M

u

e R

h

u

w w

e

r

R

n

e

T

s

I

i

a

c c

l

,

t

S

t

n

T

a a

e

n

e

e

i

e

t

s s

H d

e

M

r

V

w

t n t

l

r

o

- i

i

l l

s

t

a c

e e

E

E

n

m

z

e

t

m

M

C

A

L

r

i

2

n

e

n

a

o

i

e

S

2

t

v

m

v

O

r

e

P

s

i

d

T

e

O

c

a

o A

R

t

l

M

c

h

C V

l

r

r

l

i

I

t i

m

i

e

e n

s O

A

o

a

a

n

g

,

b

l

3

y

u

L

L

t

t

t

o

e

s

5

d

h

:

r

o

U

o

r

r

e

é

F

e N

t

2

N

H u

r

v

h

w

r o

e

0

t

e

a

a

e

T

r

h n

a

r

1

z

i

t

E

I

s c

l

(

e h 6

t

n

w

a

h

o

E

u

l

-

t

o

b

-

a

E

S

e

R t

n

b

u

o h

y

a

r

t

v

S

o

t

n

v

e

e

s

s

e

s

r

e

p

a

t

:

t

S

n i

i

a

)

d

m l

t

T

h

p ,

e

i

t

S

h

e

o

e

a

i

a

d

e

p

o

i

n

n g

t

n

n

s

n

h

a

o

e

a

s

i

m n

n e

w

s

d

u o

l

h

i B Len Tsou

G

n

s

7

h

s

9 e

e r

b

.

h

a

m

7

o

N

i

d

P

,

o

g

r

C

w

o

e

i o

a

a

r

b

n

i

v

d

r

e

r

v

d

y

i

e

t

f

e

i

r

a

e

- r

l

m

m

e

r

o

f

s

l

W

.

i

k n

b

o

n

b

a

i

t

s o

a

e

l

r

t

l

a

n

r

e

r

2

c

d

d

e

0

i

d o

1

n

u

6

b

S

I

t

t

y

N

b

s

p

h

t

i

y

a

e

s

d

h s

G

i

p

p

e

I

e

n

n

L

e

e

p

t

a

A

n

e

r

k

t

S

r

e

e

n

t

-

G

h

r

w f C h

w

a

s

o

e

i

i

O

t

h

a

r

v

s

a

i

n

S

c

o

r

i

i

t

W

t

a

l

l

e

o

p

G

n

e

t

W

m

r

h

a

b

a

:

e

f

i

n

e

a i e

a

l

V

e

r

g

m

B

h i n

r

e

a

t

s

h

m

o

r i

r

n

D

h

a

n

t

i

a

i

g

n

t

n

o

e

d

C

n

h

D

a

u

m n

c i

g

t

e

e

d

v

a

o

h

W

w o

h

i

e

b

l

m

e

l

r

s

l

c

a

a i

W

i e

i t

o

m

a

t

i

t

d

h

-

n

t

m

s

a

T

l

e a

u

o

t

h

r

i

G

a

l

h m

n

n

n

i

i

ä

l

n

o

e

o

i

N a

.

l

e

s

n

m

f

a

I

s

m

e

t

n

t

g

o

w l

N

a

h

t

e

o

o

f

e

n

i

a

c

a

r

w

m

s

r

n

a

a

z

d

n

a

i

s

t

a

o

(

e

a

i

d c

t

a

i

n

o

r

o

l t

n

d

b

e

i

n

E

1

n

l

o

i

o

y

r

w

t

0

a

c

n

n

v

i

G

e

o

t

a

S

a

e

s

n

t

n

e

s

l

,

t

e

h

t

r

B

c

T

I

p

t

r

e

m

B

e

o

h

r

a

t

i n

P

M

e

ä

t

a

t

g

i

h

t

a

m

l

n

o

a

T

r

m

s

e

e

n d

b

v

m

i

)

e

a

o

e

o

e

c

,

x

e

n

n

s

l

a

r

g

u

i

m

.

n

a

2

m

r

s

T

n

a

, r

t 0

b

h

i

p t

i

w

n

a

1

n e

e

e

,

d

6

a

e

g

r

m

b

d

d

s

.

r

a

S

u

s

r

T a

e

n

o

i

p

t

h

u

m

i

v

n

d

n

g

a

ä

i g

e

n

o

a

l n

S

l

h

o

m

v r

g

o

i

p

t

i

c

s

e

f

e

a

a a

a

h

t

r

h

l

i n

l

h

t

n

o

i

n

o

e

s

f

. Barney Green OBITUARY StanHilton FarewelltothelastknownBritish veteranoftheSpanishCivilWar

Stan Hilton, the last surviving Briton who fought in the legendary International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, died on 21 October 2016 in Australia, aged 98. Stan was a 19-year-old merchant seaman when he jumped ship in the port of Alicante in November 1937. ‘The Spanish people needed help,’ he later explained. ‘It was the right thing to do.’ He made his way to Albacete and enlisted with the British Battalion of the 15th International Brigade. He saw action that winter around Teruel. Then in the spring of 1938 the battalion was routed as General Franco’s forces, aided by troops sent by Mussolini and by Hitler’s Condor Legion, swept through Aragon and Catalonia. ‘It was every man for himself,’ said Stan, who As Stan Hilton’s death was announced, Australian eventually reached Barcelona, where he caught freelance journalist DENIS ROGATYUK had just finished a ship home. preparing a profile of our ‘last man standing’ for the Born in Newhaven, Sussex, on 31 December IBMT Magazine . This is what he wrote… 1917, Stan Hilton went on to serve in the lthough fit and healthy until near the end of his life, Stan merchant navy throughout the Second World Hilton, the 98-year old veteran of the Spanish CivilWar and War. In the 1950s he emigrated with his family ASecondWorldWar, could no longer recall his four-month to Australia, where he worked mostly as a tiler adventure in Spain in late 1937 and early 1938. Thankfully, his son in the building trade. He died in a nursing home Gordon and grandson Adam still keep alive the stories and in Ocean Grove, near Melbourne. recollections he told them over many years. Stan was born into poverty and hardship. His first memories were Some 2,500 volunteers from Britain and Ireland of being dumped at a workhouse near Brighton. He was then fostered joined the International Brigades during the before ending up in a school where orphans were trained for domestic service. civil war of 1936-39, and 526 of them died in the But things got even worse and, still a teenager, he began sleeping bitter war that saw the elected government of rough in Brighton, until one day a policewoman secured a place for him the Spanish Republic toppled by a fascist- on a marine training course. This was around 1933. As a ship’s steward backed military rebellion. he served on several merchant navy ships, going to ports around the world. Stan’s death is the end of an era – but not the It was in November 1937, while on the Oakworth, when he jumped end of a story. The IBMT will continue to keep ship in the Spanish port of Alicante. On the voyage south there had alive the memory and spirit of Stan and the been an altercation with a ship’s officer, which ended in fisticuffs. The officer was ‘a real swine’, and Stan had a short fuse in those days – he other volunteers who fought fascism and was a bit of a fighter. defended democracy in Spain. Ashore, he met a fellow Briton, who said: ‘Why don’t you come with They shall not pass! ¡No pasarán! me, I’m joining the International Brigades?’ Stan immediately agreed. ‘I saw people parading around and saw all these fellows who had been Continued overleaf

IBMT Magazine 1-2017 5 STAN HILTON h c

From previous page a e injured, and I felt pity,’ he told an interviewer in 2010. ‘The L d i v

Spanish people needed help. It was the right thing to do.’ a D Stan and his companion made their way to the British Battalion base near Albacete. There he remembered the Russian trainers, as the International Brigades used much Soviet equipment, such as the Dikterov submachine-gun. Unlike most of his comrades, Stan was not overly political. And the reality of going to war really scared him. Despite all this, Stan understood that the Republican side were the ‘underdogs’ in the civil war and he instinctively felt compelled to fight on their side and against Franco. He was fond too of singing their songs, like ‘The Internationale’. At one point, he attended a concert by Paul Robeson,

when he was entertaining and visiting the International Brigades. d HehadtheluckoftheDevil. He’djumpshipinSpainanddo alright,he’dreturnbackto Englandandnotgetarrested, he’dgetcapturedbyGermans andturnoutOK.Everything alwaysseemedtoworkout wellforhimintheend.

Stan fought at the Battle of Teruel, managing to retreat after Franco’s fascist forces finally re-took the city in February 1938. Then in March that year, with Franco’s forces launching a major offensive in Aragon, Stan and the rest of the British Battalion found themselves in full retreat and fighting a rearguard action.The battalion was scattered. ‘It was every man for himself,’ Stan recalled. Cut off and lost, he took shelter in a hut with two comrades. They were both killed when the hut was attacked, but Stan, who luckily happened to be outside at the time, fled the scene. Being a very good swimmer, he was able to swim across the River Ebro to safety. He finally reachedTortosa, from where he caught a train to Barcelona. He was there during merciless bombing LOOKING BACK: Stan Hilton studies a map ofSpain at a residential home in of civilians by Mussolini’s airforce. After a few days he boarded a ship Yarrawonga in 2013; inset:Stan pictured in the Royal Marines Reserves in the bound for England, the Lake Lugano , and the crew put him to work. early 1950s. Stan’s Spanish adventure was behind him, though, some weeks after arrival in London, MI5 came knocking on his door to question him by several construction companies tasked with restoring and about his time with the International Brigades.Thankfully, the threat of rebuilding bombed-out towns around the country. a wider war in Europe and the overall mood in Britain allowed Stan to In 1958, Stan moved to Australia. His wife Sylvia and four children put his skills and knowledge to use. Almost immediately, he enrolled at had moved there two years earlier, as part of a government scheme a naval college and eventually returned to being a ship’s steward, that gave whole families subsidised passages to Australia. serving on oil tankers and tramp steamers. Stan and his family initially settled in Perth. But, after separating from Sylvia and seeing few job prospects in Perth, he decided to move t was while on the tanker San Casimiro in March 1941 that he was to Melbourne. There, he spent the rest of his life, working in the captured off the Azores by the German battle cruiser Gneisenau . building trade, specialising in floor cutting, layering and tiling. IStan and the rest of the crew were taken off their ship and put on In his final years, Stan’s memories started to fade. He lived for a boats.The San Casimiro was then rigged with explosive charges and while at a nursing home in Yarrawonga in upstateVictoria, where a scuttled. However, the British battleship HMS Renown soon arrived on local newspaper reporter wrote about his exploits as an International the scene, captured the Germans and rescued Stan and his shipmates. Brigader – and in doing so alerted the IBMT to his existence – before Unfortunately all Stan’s possessions, including some from his time moving to an intensive care unit in Ocean Grove, near Melbourne. in the International Brigades, were lost with the San Casimiro and now ‘He had the luck of the Devil,’ says grandson Adam. ‘He’d jump ship reside on the bottom of the Atlantic. in Spain and do alright, he’d return back to England and not get Following the end of the SecondWorldWar, Stan joined the Royal arrested, he’d get captured by Germans and turn out OK. Everything Marines Reserves, taking the frogman’s course. He was also employed always seemed to work out well for him in the end.’
6 International Brigade Memorial Trust IRELAND ANDTHESPANISHCIVIL WAR ‘Inspiringspiritof humanity’defined theInternationalBrigades

MICHAEL D HIGGINS , President of Ireland, addressed the memory of the Irish and British men and women who so bravely fought to defend democracy and fight fascism in Spain. IBMT’s 2016 Annual General Meeting held on 15 October The death in January 2009 of Bob Doyle – whom I had the pleasure of at the Liberty Hall, Dublin.This is what he said. meeting on a number of occasions with Michael O’Riordan and his colleagues – marked the passing of the last veteran of the Connolly he International Brigades were formally established by a decree of Column; reminding us of the role theTrust and all who support it play as the Spanish Republic on 18 October 1936. Around 40,000 important custodians of the history which had such an important Tinternational volunteers from more than 50 countries joined the influence on the society in which we now live.We must be grateful to the Brigades. Amongst them were 200 Irish-born volunteers moved by the MemorialTrust for their untiring work in ensuring that the task of striving plight of the working classes of Spain and, deeply concerned by the threat to achieve a full and ethical interpretation of that most controversial of to democracy and the lengthening shadow of fascism that was spreading conflicts that was the Spanish CivilWar and its place within the history of across Europe, decided to volunteer for the International Brigade. Over 60 modern Europe continues. It is appropriate too that we recall how long the of these Irish internationalists would never come home. consequences would last in Spain, the cruelty of the extra-judicial killings, The International Brigades were drawn from a wide range of social the incarcerations and the long wait for parliamentary democracy that strata and occupations. Some of their number, like the novelist George would ensue. Orwell, the poetWH Auden, or the former Church of Ireland minister Engaging with the past may be a difficult and complex process, but it is Robert Hilliard, were intellectuals drawn from the middle classes, but ethically unavoidable.The Pacto del Olvido , imposed by political elites in most historical studies now agree that the vast majority of the Irish and Spain after the fall of Franco, signifies the fears that so often exist around British who joined the International Brigades were manual workers, any deep or honest reflection on a history that, in the case of the abusing workers with an extraordinary sense of social and political justice and the elites, has much to hide. importance of defending workers’ rights wherever they were at stake. As the research of Angela Jackson, among others, has shown, women – many f we are to stand back and take a longer historical perspective of the of whom worked in medical units or relief organisations – for that reason events leading up to the Spanish CivilWar, our gaze might initially fall played an important role in the International Brigades. Ion the rise of liberalism across Europe during the 19th century and the The carnage of the working class in the trenches ofWorldWar One, in opposing voices of authoritarianism that emerged and saw, in the what was above all a contest of empires, was for them a fresh memory.The demand for democratic participation, a threat from the new voices that authoritarianism at its source, the culture of absolutionist power that was were challenging the previous unassailability of Monarchy, Nobility and fascism, was already thick in the air. Church.We can perceive how such growing democratic demands and

Not just historians, but all of us, owe a debt of gratitude to the political agitation and related organisation gave birth by way of response

International Brigade MemorialTrust, who continue to keep alive the to the curious relationship between monarchy and dictatorship which existed throughout Europe in the 1920s. d We can also observe the strain on fragile Allofusoweadebtof democracies across the continent, as they sought to deal with the weight of class gratitudetothe confrontation in conditions of change and InternationalBrigade the conflict between the left and right MemorialTrust,who political forces –and often the differences within each.Those with fascist sympathies continuetokeepalivethe offered support in the name of order to memoryoftheIrishand dictatorship as it promised strong actions to Britishmenandwomen solve the consequences for their nations of a whosobravelyfoughtto worldwide economic crisis; a crisis that would claim lives and livelihoods all over the defenddemocracyand world.The politics of fear meant that an fightfascisminSpain. opportunity had emerged for the seizure of powers. It would be simplistic, however, to claim that the war that broke out in Spain on 17 July 1936 was ab initio a straightforward clash between forces calling themselves democratic and fascist. As with all major wars, the Spanish CivilWar was the outcome of observable social forces; an impoverished and disenfranchised workforce, landholding r e e patterns of the rich that were almost feudal, t a M

l Continued overleaf l a h s r a 7 M IRELAND ANDTHESPANISHCIVIL WAR

From previous page campaign for Catholic Emancipation in the previous century. an elite intent upon maintaining their wealth and privilege, strong regional Meanwhile, like the tens of thousands of foreigners who had decided autonomy movements, a Church newly committed to corporatism, to come to the Republic’s aid in Spain, many Irish men and women were drawing on such documents as Quadragesimo Anna, which recalled moved by the distress of the democratically-elected Spanish Rerum Novarum of 40 years earlier, which had condemned what it government and the suffering of civilians.They were courageous and generalised as Marxism and communism. determined.They had to be as, for many of them, getting to Spain Hitler’s rise to power, which had culminated two years before with his involved great difficulty and hardship, as described by the late Michael achievement of absolute command of Germany – together with his O’Riordan, who recalls his own illegal and clandestine journey through alliance with Mussolini and his concern to distractWestern powers from London and Paris as a ‘difficult and long road’. his Central European Strategy – resulted in Nationalist rebels receiving Most of the volunteers were smuggled in over the Pyrenees, where support from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. they received a sadly inadequate training for the war they were about to As to the position of other countries, despite the signing by 27 fight.They had, however, been left under no illusions upon recruitment countries, including Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union, about the bloody and brutal battle that lay before them. Michael of a non-intervention pact in September 1936, it was a war that was soon O’Riordan remembers the ‘authentic, realistic and honest’ description to take on an international dimension. Stalin, worried by the rise of they received of what they were likely to encounter in Spain, which had fascism in Europe and the threat it presented to a Soviet Union, moved to the effect of some volunteers stepping out and returning home. prevent the Nationalists from taking power by providing military assistance to the Republicans. mong the ranks of the International Brigades was the brilliant Ireland’s reaction to the civil war was probably unique across Europe. It young poet Charles Donnelly, whose final words were to become was a war which provoked a divided response, with volunteers going to Aan almost iconic description of the Spanish CivilWar, still Spain to support both Nationalists and Republicans. remembered and quoted today many years after they were first uttered

It is difficult for some even today, given the high regard in which the Irish on the battlefields of Spain.

International Brigaders are now held in this country, to understand how Described by Eavan Boland as ‘a dark star’ who can ‘haunt a d generation’, Charles Donnelly was just 22 years of age when he decided to come to the aid of Republican Spain. Donnelly, with hundreds of men from Itisdifficultforsomeeventoday, the International Brigades, fought in one of the bloodiest confrontations giventhehighregardinwhich between Republican and Nationalist forces – that of the Battle of Jarama which took place just seven weeks after his arrival in Spain. theIrishInternationalBrigaders It was here, during a lull in machine-gun fire and just moments before a bullet was shot into his temple, that Charles Donnelly plucked a bunch of arenowheldinthiscountry,to olives from the dust and squeezing them spoke the five simple words that still echo poignantly across the decades: ‘Even the olives are bleeding’. understandhowthegreat At Jarama a battle took place that, in the words of Cathal O’Shannon majorityofIrishmenwhofought many years later, was to ‘epitomise war in all its horror’. Here, the Irish and British battalions fought side by side and suffered intheSpanishCivilWardidsoin huge casualties, yet achieving one of their finest hours as they played their brave role in thwarting an attempt by Franco’s forces to encircle supportofGeneralFranco. Madrid. Ten days after his death, Charles Donnelly’s body, ‘face fresh, naive the great majority of Irishmen who fought in the Spanish CivilWar did so in looking’, was buried beneath one of those olive trees in that foreign land support of General Franco. far away from his nativeTyrone; his family left unaware of his death for We must remember, however, that support for Franco in Ireland was some time, his distressed father unable to talk about him for years.Yet it is sourced in the conservative institutional forces dominated by a brand of important to recall that support for the Spanish Republic drew alliances clericalism far more authoritarian than spiritual and imposed through fear, together between religions in Northern Ireland.The silence of the relatives and many of those who decided to join the International Brigades faced of the lost is as moving now to recall as it was understandable in its time. public opprobrium at home. Sadly, such silence was not unusual. Many of those who died so bravely Rather than being seen as a struggle between democracy and fascism, for freedom were marginalised back home in Ireland for many years. Many the Spanish CivilWar was widely presented in Ireland as a conflict had their teaching posts taken from them. Communist Party spokesman between Catholicism and communism.Yet both Catholic and non-Catholic Eugene McCartan, describing the anguish and despair of those who lost clergymen in Northern Ireland would support the Spanish Republic. sons to anti-fascist forces in the Spanish CivilWar, said: ‘To be attached to The Catholic hierarchy’s pastoral warning against the spread of left- someone who died was not safe in Ireland.The Catholic Church made a wing ideas in Ireland, issued some years before, had clearly stated that rallying cry for fascists and held collections to support Franco. It was no the two beliefs, Catholicism and communism, were completely wonder families kept their heads down.’ incompatible. Meanwhile the influence of the shirted movement that However, while O’Duffy’s Irish Brigade was comprised wholly of Roman would come to be known as the Blueshirts continued to spread under the Catholics, we must not forget that many committed Catholics fought with leadership of Eoin O’Duffy, who was an admirer of European fascism and the International Brigade, seeing no conflict between their religious not committed to democratic politics if it included workers entitled to beliefs and the spirit of solidarity which drove them to fight, and in some agitate for their rights. Described by Diarmuid Ferritter as ‘a mirror to the cases sacrifice their lives, for democracy in Spain. Ireland of theTwenties andThirties’, O’Duffy’s 700-strong Irish Brigade Frank Ryan, leader of the Irish contingent of the Brigade, wrote when was supported by the Catholic Church, the Dean of Cashel sending them completing a questionnaire on his arrival at the concentration camp of San on their way with the blessing of such words as: ‘The Irish Brigade have Pedro de Cardeña that he had come to Spain for two reasons: one to aid a gone to fight the battle of Christianity against communism.’ democratic government, and the other because he believed that religion Throughout the country the church-gate collection for ‘ambulances was not at stake in the Spanish war and he wanted to show that O’Duffy for Franco’ was the largest since the time of Daniel O’Connell’s did not represent the Irish people.

8 International Brigade Memorial Trust PRESENTATION: MichaelDHiggins(centre), r

e withwifeSabinaHiggins,receivesanIBMT e t

a commemorativeplatefromIBMTIreland M l l SecretaryManusO’Riordan,whoalsogavehim a h

s acopyof‘PoemsfromSpain:BritishandIrish r a InternationalBrigadersontheSpanishCivil M : s War’,notingthatthePresidentishimselfa o t o poet.Picturedright:partoftheenthusiastic h P receptiontothePresident’sspeechfrom IBMTmembersattheAGM,including(inthe foreground)ExecutiveCommittee memberDoloresLong.

The Ireland of the 1930s that produced these opposing forces was an us and for many nations around the globe, if just and enduring peace is to Ireland that experienced the extremes of authoritarianism imposed on the be achieved. people, be it in relation to culture, dance, books, moral panics against As the world continues to face conflict, poverty and abuse of power, we communism and fear.The character of the Irish International Brigade, with are called upon to continue to show moral courage and be willing in our its mix of socialists, idealists, communists, and men of all religions and words and policies to demonstrate a sense of internationalism. If we are to none, can perhaps be best summed up in the words of the late Paddy overcome together the forces of greed, intolerance and oppression which O’Daire, a leader of the International Brigade, who said: ‘All causes are denysomanyofourfellowglobalcitizenstheirrighttojusticeandfreedom, worldwide. Freedom is indivisible. If a man fights for freedom in one place, it can only be with alarm that, 80 years after the beginning of the Spanish he is fighting for it everywhere.’ CivilWar, we see xenophobic, nationalistic and inward-looking movements The urge to defend the Spanish Republic invoked internationalism and gaining traction again in mainstream politics right across Europe. a shared humanism that was construed as a threat to the absolutism and If we are to tackle the growing divisions within the international the imposed certainties of the time.The response was vicious. It was to be community it is important that we focus our efforts anew on building social a brave and bitter fight, culminating in an ungenerous defeat which saw cohesion and solidarity. In the centenary year of the republican uprising of thousands executed, a million people exiled or imprisoned, and a 1916, and the 80th anniversary of fascism’s attack on the Spanish Republic, generation denied the right to live, grow and flourish in a democratic we should recall the origins and aims of true republicanism, and strive to nation. continue to show the strength of conviction, moral courage and generosity Today, the people of Spain continue to grapple with transacting the that was shared among those who fought in the International Brigades. legacy of a civil war that was undoubtedly the most important chapter of its 20th century history. It is a chapter which has left a profound legacy, he inspiring spirit of humanity that defined the International with many citizens still engaged years later in a continuing search for Brigades has never, perhaps, been more movingly articulated than d Tin the farewell speech of the great Spanish Republican, Dolores Ibárruri – or La Pasionaria, as she is better known. Addressing them at the Thevolunteerswhojoinedthe final parade in Barcelona in October 1938 she told them that: ‘From all peoples, from all races, you came to us like brothers, like sons of immortal Brigades…setanexampleof Spain; and in the hardest days of the war, when the capital of the Spanish internationalsolidarityand Republic was threatened, it was you, gallant comrades of the International Brigades, who helped save the city with your fighting enthusiasm, your globalcitizenshipwhichtoday heroism and your spirit of sacrifice.’ The volunteers who joined the Brigades from across Europe and continuestoinspirethosewho beyond set an example of international solidarity and global citizenship which today continues to inspire those who bravely march alongside the bravelymarchalongsidethe downtrodden, the excluded and the marginalised; and who battle against downtrodden,theexcludedand inequality in all its forms, fighting for justice and freedom in communities and societies across the globe, those who work to give meaning and themarginalised. greater democracy for all. As a nation we can be very proud of the brave Irish men and women who contact with their past; a past, and as so often elsewhere, perhaps joined the International Brigade in 1936. May I commend you, therefore, because of the pain or guilt, not discussed at home, and often left out of for the work you do in keeping alive the memory and the values of all those the history books studied in their classrooms. who bravely fought for ‘freedom everywhere’ on the battlefields of Spain Here in Ireland, as we engage with the ongoing Decade of almost 80 years ago. Commemorations, we have been called to reflect on the challenge of ¡Viva la Quince Brigada! remembering ethically. Such remembrance must always aspire to respect
complexity and to seek to understand, as they construed it, the integrity AfulltextofthePresident’sspeech,includingsomepassagesinIrish,isavailableat:[www. and the motivations of the men and women from the past.That is not an president.ie/en/media-library/speeches/speech-at-the-opening-of-the-international- easy task. Such ethical remembering remains a challenge for Spain, as for brigade-memorial-trust-agm].

IBMT Magazine 1-2017 9 DavidHeywood(above)asClemBeckettandNeilGore(right)asChristopher Caudwell;below:‘DareDevil’Beckettandthe‘WallofDeath’.

10 International Brigade Memorial Trust ‘DARE DEVIL RIDESTO JARAMA’ Journeytothefinalwallofdeath MARLENE SIDAWAY reviews ‘Dare Devil Rides to Jarama’, the play by Neil Gore that is bringing the story of the International Brigades to audiences around the country.

erformed brilliantly by the two actors, David Heywood as Clem ‘Dare Devil’ Beckett and Neil Gore as Christopher Caudwell – his Preal name was Christopher St John Sprigg, or ‘John Sprigg’ in Spain – ‘Dare Devil Rides to Jarama’ is a must-see play. The performances have warmth and humour and, with a poetic script, foot-tapping music and enthusiastic audience participation, it all makes for a lively and enjoyable evening. Louise Townsend’s direction keeps the play whizzing along, shifting easily between humour, agitprop and tragedy. Poems by UNLIKELY WARRIORS: Caudwell and others are woven into the drama, among them Jack SpeedwayriderClemBeckett(left)andnovelist, aeronauticsexpert,poetandMarxisttheoreticianChristopher(StJohnSprigg) Lindsay’s powerful ‘On Guard for Spain’, and David Kirkpatrick’s CaudwelldiedtogetherintheBattleofJarama. songs are guaranteed to stay in the head for many days to come; all this, and at the same time it’s a lesson to those unfamiliar with the The second act sees these two ‘unlikely warriors’ in Spain, united in story of the anti-fascist war in Spain – a seminal event in the history the anti-fascist war and with each using their complementary skills: of the 20th century. Beckett the fearless rider, mechanic and leader of men, Caudwell the David Heywood captures Beckett’s dash and glamour, while Neil wordsmith, inventor and technician. Together they go through Gore plays not only Caudwell but also wrote the play himself and gives training – with the frustrations of inappropriate armaments and impressive and truthful portraits of many other characters who ammunition – and endure boredom, hunger, exhaustion, triumph – feature in the story – everyone from Blackshirt leader Sir Oswald and the ultimate sacrifice at Jarama in February 1937. Mosley to Communist Party General Secretary Harry Pollitt! The IBMT is proud to have commissioned this dazzling new play as Beckett and Caudwell, so different in background and personality, part of our commemorations for the 80th anniversary of the formation form a bond of purpose that typified so many of those who of the International Brigades. The production has also been volunteered to fight in the International Brigades during the Spanish supported by many trade unions and other organisations and will Civil War. They had also been drawn to communism, as many other surely bring the story of the International Brigades to new audiences. d It has justly received rave reviews: ‘quite simply the best political theatre produced for a long, long time’, said the Morning Star . ‘Dare BeckettandCaudwell,so Devil Rides to Jarama’ will b e touring again all over the country early in differentinbackgroundand 2017. Make sure you see it.
personality,formabondof MarleneSidawayistheIBMT President.Fordetailsofthe2017tourdatesfor‘DareDevil purposethattypifiedsomany RidestoJarama’seeourbackcoverorgoto[www.townsendproductions.org.uk]. ofthosewhovolunteeredto fightintheInternational Brigades. such unlikely bedfellows were during the terrible depression years of the 1930s and the social inequality that they produced. The first act gives us glimpses of that inequality, with conflicts involving privileged bosses and landowners, such as the 1932 mass trespass on Kinder Scout for the right to roam in open countryside, as well as efforts to form a trade union and demand better and safer working conditions. Clem Beckett’s politics were shaped by these struggles. We follow his personal journey from a blacksmith saved from unemployment by his unique skills to a champion speedway motorcyclist and rider on the ‘Wall of Death’. Angered by the growing exploitation in the sport, including the rising death toll among untrained youngsters entering it, he forms a union for speedway riders. He is blacklisted as a result and takes his skills to the continent, including Germany, where he witnesses the rise of fascism.

IBMT Magazine 1-2017 11 SECRETARIAL NOTES

EXHIBITION: Our new Executive Council member Nina Londragan with (from left) Aberdeen City Councillor Barney Crockett and Unite Regional Industrial Organiser Tommy The International Brigade Campbell at the opening of an Memorial Trust keeps alive exhibition at Aberdeen Maritime Museum in May last the memory and spirit of year about a 1936 Spanish the men and women who seamen’s strike in Aberdeen. volunteered to defend Nina was the instigator and chief compiler of the exhibition. democracy and fight fascism See ‘Welcome to the new in Spain from 1936 to 1939 Executive Committee’.

International Brigade Memorial Trust 37a Clerkenwell Green London EC1R 0DU 020 7253 8748 www.international-brigades.org.uk WelcometothenewExecutiveCommittee workontheExecutiveCommitteeandhopethey Email AnewIBMTExecutiveCommitteewasvotedinto willcontinuetobeinvolvedinIBMTactivities. [email protected] officeatourAnnualGeneralMeetinginDublinon President 15October2016. Whywehaveanewname Marlene Sidaway ThreeIBMTOfficers,RichardBaxell(Chair),Jim IBMTmemberswhohavegivenustheiremail [email protected] Jump(Secretary)andManuelMoreno(Treasurer) addressarenowbeingsenttheIBMTe-Newsletter . Chair were allr e-electedunopposed.MarleneSidaway Thisnewfortnightlyinformationservicehas Richard Baxell (President)doesnothavetostandforannual receivedlotsofpositivefeedback.Ifyouwantto [email protected] re-election.Aballotofthe49votingmembers beaddedtothemailinglistcontact[admin@ Secretary presentattheAGMwasnecessaryforthe international-brigades.org.uk]. Jim Jump remaining11ExecutiveCommitteememberseats, Thee-newsletteraimstokeepmembers [email protected] with14candidatesnominatedtostand. informedaboutInternationalBrigadeandSpanish Treasurer TheresultsawMarshallMateer(IBMTFilm CivilWar-relatedevents,andalsocontainsIBMT Manuel Moreno [email protected] Coordinator)andRichardThorpe(Education announcementsandnewsflashesaboutactivities thathavejusttakenplace. Ireland Secretary 2017SUBSCRIPTIONS: IBMT membership AllthismeansthattheIBMTNewsletter ,orIBMT Manus O’Riordan [email protected] and affiliation fees for 2017 are now due. Please Magazine ,asithasnowbeenrenamed,asreaders pay them as promptly as possible. Rates and mayhavenoticed,candevotemorespacetolonger Scotland Secretary payment details are in the membership form on articlesandreviews.Itwasalwaysdifficultbringing Mike Arnott [email protected] the facing page. Please also consider making a outa‘newsletter’everyfourmonths–thenewsand donation. Thank you for your continued eventlistingssoonwentoutofdate–andtherewas Membership Secretary support. We depend on it to do our work. neverenoughspacetorunin-depthfeatures. Mary Greening [email protected] Hopefully,wehavenowfoundtheright OfficerandFacebookCoordinator)electedtothe combinationofonlineandprintedpublications. Merchandise Officer committee.Fortheprevious12monthstheyserved Chris Hall [email protected] asco-optedmembers. FarewelltotheCamel&Artichoke Mostmembersremainedunchanged,butwe Forthepastsixyearswehaveorganisedasocial Film Coordinator welcomeNinaLondragantothecommitteeforthe gatheringattheCamel&Artichokepubafterour Marshall Mateer [email protected] firsttime.Sheisthegrand-daughterofAberdeen commemorationonLondon’sSouthbankonthe InternationalBrigaderJohnLondragan,though firstSaturdayofJuly.Nowwelearnthatlastyear’s Education Officer Richard Thorpe basedinCardiffherself.Asa‘secondgeneration’ get-togetherwasthelast.Thepubclosedatthe [email protected] familymembersheisaverywelcomeaddition. endofDecemberandwillberedevelopedasflats Sevenofthe15-personcommitteehaveafamily andaretailspace.Thisissadnews:theCamel& Other Executive Committee members Pauline Fraser, Charles Jepson, Nina linktothevolunteers. Artichokestaffmadeusfeelverywelcome,making Londragan, Dolores Long, Danny Payne Thecommitteewillservefor12monthsuntil itanidealplacetorelaxwithfriends;itwasalsoa thenextAnnualGeneralMeeting,whichis gemofapub,tuckedawayinthebackstreets Founding Chair: Professor Paul Preston provisionallyscheduledtobeheldinCardiffon behindWaterlooStation.PubmanagerAndy Patrons: Rodney Bickerstaffe, Professor 14October2017. Wilsonsharesourdisappointment.‘There’sbeena Peter Crome, Hywel Francis, Professor ThethreenewmembersreplaceHilaryJones, pubonthissiteformorethan300years,’hepoints Helen Graham, Ken Livingstone, Len McCluskey, Christy Moore, Jack O’Connor, whodidnotstandforre-electionafter12yearson out.AsfortheIBMT,thesearchisnowonfor Maxine Peake, Baroness Royall of thecommittee,andDuncanLongstaff,whofailed anothervenueforthisyear’ssocial. Blaisdon, Mick Whelan tobere-electedafterservingforthepasteight Registered charity no. 1094928 years.TherewasathirdvacancyasaresultofMick WoodyGuthriesongsheardforfirsttime WhelanbecominganIBMTPatronearlierlastyear. PhilosophyFootball’sgalaeveningatLondon’sRich facebook.com/groups/7123291063 WearegratefultoHilaryandDuncanfortheir Mixartscentreon1Octoberforthe80th twitter.com/IBMT_SCW youtube.com/user/IBMTnews flickr.com/photos/ibmt International Brigade Memorial Trust SECRETARIAL NOTES BECOME A MEMBER

anniversary of the International Brigades and the Battle of Cable Street was a resounding Join the IBMT now and help success. A highlight was the first ever public performance of three songs about the Spanish Civil War penned by American folk singer Woody keep alive the memory and Guthrie. They were recited by Will Kaufmann (www.willkaufman.com), who discovered them spirit of the volunteers in the archives of the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Guthrie family gave permission for the songs to be performed at Rich Complete the form below and send subscriptions and any donations to : Mix on the strict condition that no-one should IBMT, 37a Clerkenwell Green, London EC1R 0DU. record or transcribe them. A professor of Members receive a free copy of the IBMT Magazine at their home address and American literature at the University of Central are emailed the IBMT eNewsletter. Lancashire, Kaufman is the author of ‘Woody Guthrie, American Radical’ (2015) and has a one- For a Direct Debit form or for any other membership or subscription queries man show, Woody Guthrie: ‘Hard Times and Hard email: [email protected] or tel: 029 2019 5412. Traveli n’’, that brings Guthrie’s songs – including his version of ‘Jarama Valley’ dedicated to the Membership application form Lincoln Battalion – to new audiences. Full name Our memorial is a rallying point Up to three additional names (for household membership)* Heartening news comes from Reading, where IBMT stalwart Ray Parkes reports that the International Brigade memorial (pictured) is now the meeting place for local demonstrations. Address h t r o w d o

o Postcode l B

r e

t Email** Telephone* e P Membership category and annual subscription rate (please tick as appropriate): K Free – International Brigade widow/ers K £25 – Household (up to four people at the same address; one copy of the IBMT Magazine ) K £20 – Individual K £12.50 – Unwaged K Institutions – contact Membership Secretary (see above) for rates

Donation of £______enclosed* Signature Date * Optional / If ap plicable ** Members who provide an email address will receive our fortnightly IBMT eNewsletter Created by sculptor Eric Stanford and originally NB: Make cheques payable to International Brigade Memorial Trust inaugurated in 1990, the memorial was restored and relocated in 2015 to a new site in Forbury Gardens in order to make way for redevelopment NB: Please note that different annual subscription rates apply to overseas (non-UK) members. These reflect the higher postage costs of mailing the IBMT Magazine . at its original site outside Reading’s civic centre. They are: Ray tells us that the memorial has since then GHousehold £30 / $48 / 37 GIndividual £25 / $40 / 30 GUnwaged £17 / $27 / 22 become the focal point for rallies, including last € € € year a meeting to support Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, a memorial gathering for murdered Gift Aid declaration Labour MP Jo Cox and the May Day demo Please complete if you are a UK taxpayer: organised by Reading Trades Union Council. At least 16 people from or with a strong I wish this and all subsequent payments to the International Brigade Memorial Trust to connection to Reading are known to have gone to be treated as Gift Aid donations. Spain to join the International Brigades. Three Name were killed. It’s good to know that their memory will be passed on to younger activists who see Signature Date our memorial when they congregate there.

Jim Jump IBMT Secretary International Brigade Memorial Trust [email protected] www.international-brigades.org.uk IBMT Magazine 1-2017 Registered charity no. 1094928 13 BABE IN ARMS: Daisy with Pepe Fernández in 1936. This photo is Daisy’s only memento of her father. Below: mother Isabel Innes and Daisy at home in Bristol.

14 THE SPANISH HOLOCAUST Murdered by the fascists: the father I never knew 2011, was able to relay confirmation of Pepe’s fate to the family. Preston But 75 years on, Daisy was grateful for had asked his contacts in Galicia to investigate the case, and they told him they were 99 per cent certain that a José María Fernández Rodríguez, confirmation of Pepe Fernández’s fate arrested in Lugo on 19 or 20 July 1936, was the same person as Daisy’s By Jim Jump father. Pepe had then been tried by a military court on 23 August and accused of placing bombs in Lugo’s cathedral and episcopal palace. he lives of many thousands of people in Britain have been touched ‘The accusation was entirely fictitious,’ Paul wrote in a letter to Daisy’s by the Spanish Civil War; few more painfully perhaps than that of son John, ‘and was used against many of the Republicans put on trial in TIBMT member Daisy Fernández, an artist and former silkscreen Lugo at this time. Their real crime was to have remained loyal to the printer now living in Bristol. legitimate democratic government and the fantastical accusation was Hers is an extraordinary story, a tragic family tale which meant she grew meant simply to smear them within the atmosphere of terror being up without knowing her Spanish father and only receiving confirmation generated by the military rebels.’ some five years ago from historian and IBMT Founding Chair Paul Preston At this same time as he was approached for help by Daisy’s family, that he had been executed by the fascist-backed military rebels soon after Preston was working on ‘The Spanish Holocaust’, his monumental the start of the Spanish Civil War. survey, published in 2012, of the violence inflicted on civilians during the Born in Liverpool in 1934, Daisy spent her early years gradually having Spanish Civil War. According to his book, there were at least 4,265 to come to terms with the loss of her father. But her life –and that of her summary executions of Republican supporters in Lugo province alone Scottish-born mother and younger sister –was indelibly marked, both that were perpetrated by the military rebels and their fascist allies. emotionally and politically, by the loss. Much of her artistic output has Pepe was executed on 27 August in Lugo. He was refered to as a 43- had political themes, whether anti-torture posters for Amnesty year-old man born in Ares, a coastal town in La Coruña province, and a International or work inspired by the resident of Lugo. Before execution he 1973 coup in Chile and the plight of refused the last rites. prisoners held at Guantánamo. Last year she donated her replica of hree years before the family was Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ to the IBMT. It told this story, Daisy’s sister measures nearly two metres in length, TJoyce, who now lives in Chester, with captions linking the infamous wrote a letter to the IBMT Newsletter bombing of the Basque town during the (issue 2-2008) telling what was then war in Spain to the agony of civilians known about the family’s story. She bombed more recently in Afghanistan, described her mother’s account of that Palestine and Iraq. last time she saw Pepe in jail. Pepe gave Daisy a peseta and said he was in hen the Spanish Civil War prison so that one day every child in ON CANVAS: began, Daisy, aged just 20 Daisy’s recreation of Picasso’s ‘Guernica’, now with the IBMT. Spain would have a peseta. ‘At the time, Wmonths, was living in Lugo, in Spain’s north-west region of this did nothing to calm the distress of a toddler who couldn’t Galicia. Her father, José (‘Pepe’) Fernández, worked for a local radio understand why her daddy was not able to hold and cuddle her,’ Joyce station, hosting a programme giving English lessons every Saturday recounted. ‘However, when my mum told us about the peseta when we morning. He was also a strong supporter of the Spanish Republic. were old enough to understand, it became a very emotional consolation Her mother was Isabel Innes, originally from Fraserborough, in for not having a father. We thought of him – and still do – as the most Aberdeenshire. The couple met in Liverpool in 1929/30 via a mutual heroic of men.’ friend while Pepe was travelling home from Cuba and the US, where he Their mother was heroic too, insists Joyce. ‘She was 40 years old, with a had spent several years. They fell in love and decided to start a new life baby and a toddler, no money, no pension, but fortunately able to live with in Spain. my grandmother and as soon as I was weaned she went back to work as a Isabel returned briefly to Liverpool in 1934 to give birth to Daisy – in telephonist on full-time shifts at the Anfield exchange. I don’t think she order for her to qualify for a British passport – and then travelled back to ever really accepted that my father was dead and when she went to an Spain with her baby daughter. Soon the new family’s lives were to be International Brigades commemorative meeting in Liverpool in 1938 she shattered. Pepe was arrested immediately after the military coup in July must have hoped in some way for a sort of reunion with him.’ 1936. With Daisy, aged 20 months, in her arms and seven months Daisy, who these days struggles with eye health problems, says she pregnant, Isabel was able to visit him in prison. Fearful for his family’s and Joyce have finally come to terms with the grief suffered by the family. safety, Pepe implored her to leave Spain, which she did, arriving in ‘One big comfort,’ she says, ‘has been to know that historians such as Liverpool with Daisy in October of that year. Soon afterwards, Daisy’s Paul Preston and organisations such as the IBMT have done so much to sister Joyce was born, and though they heard reports suggesting that keep alive the memory of those honourable people like my father who Pepe had been executed, this was never confirmed. Isabel always lived supported the Spanish Republic.’ with the hope that he might still be alive.
Daisy’s mother died in 1990, sadly many years before Paul Preston, in Jim Jump is the IBMT Secretary.

IBMT Magazine 1-2017 15 LETTERS For the Australian volunteers and their memorial’s instigators

he main achievement of the Australian names of the places and battles where the TAssociation of Friends of the International International Brigades fought. It also has a Brigades (AAFIB) has been the construction of plaque with a short account of the Spanish a memorial to the Australians who joined the Civil War and of the Australians who went to International Brigades or served as nurses in assist the Spanish Republic. Spanish hospitals looking after the Brigaders The text is both in English and in Spanish (my and others. translation). It now has two additional plaques The monument [pictured] was dedicated in as a memorial to the two Australian women 1993 and it stands in Lennox Gardens, on the who conceived the idea of the monument and, shore of Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra. It was together with the other members of the AAFIB, unveiled by Lloyd Edmonds, the only survivor eventually arrived at the main goal, to have a at the time of the 70 Australians who joined memorial in Canberra, the capital of Australia. the Brigades. Netta Burns and Amirah Inglis will t his way The AAFIB has now been discontinued due always be remembered as the makers of the to lack of interest and support: most of the monument. Netta died in 1996 and Amirah in original members have died or are now unable 2015. Amirah’s uncle served in the to continue their membership activity. International Brigades and in her memoirs she On winding up the affairs of the association, explains how, as a child in Melbourne, she the members decided at the last meeting that contributed with her pocket money to a whatever funds were left in the bank account shall be donated to similar collection for the Spanish children affected by the civil war. associations. We are therefore transferring these funds to your bank As a Spanish-Australian, I admired these women and was very proud account. Though we are not talking about large sums of money, we of being their friend. I also send kindest regards to the IBMT. must do it officially and as required by law. Carmen Castelo The monument in Canberra depicts a map of Spain in bronze, with the By email

Farewell and thanks, Jim Carmody these discoveries happen is a long story! Cubans salute Jimmy Shand’s flag was very saddened to read (issue 3-2016) of Readers may be interested to know that an his is a belated response to the article on Ithe death of Jim Carmody. When I first began updated list of my study (but only the British and TJimmy Shand (issue 1-2016). One thing not my 1990s study of Jews who served against Israeli volunteers) is to be republished in a mentioned in the article is that, as well as fascism in the Spanish Civil War, I spent many chapter in a second edition of my book ‘Fighting rescuing his son and his comrades from Madrid in long Saturdays at the splendid Marx Memorial Back’ (Valentine Mitchell) this spring. the hours before Franco’s troops entered the city, Library archives. Jim spotted me on almost my Strength to your elbows! Jimmy Shand also rescued a large flag that flew first visit and came and introduced himself, Martin Sugarman on the Telefónica building in Madrid, and that flag expressing, in his delightful Irish accent, his Archivist of AJEX: Association of Jewish now resides at the Working Class Movement great interest in and admiration of the Jews Ex-Servicemen and Women of the UK Library in Salford. He gave it to Hilda Froom, later who went to Spain. He took my contacts and By email Hilda Baruch, for safekeeping in 1939, and she thereafter telephoned and wrote to me donated it to the library in 1986 on the 50th regularly with any information he could find on was very sorry to see the sad news of Jim anniversary of the start of the Spanish Civil War. the Jewish volunteers from his extensive ICarmody’s death (issue 3-2016). After I retired On 14 July last year the library was delighted to private investigations and research, which and joined the IBMT I started to try and find out be visited by two members of the Miami Five, spanned many years. about my uncle, Samuel Edward Walsh, killed at He revealed some astonishing facts to me, Brunete in 1937. I think Jim was the first person including the presence of a group of Zionist Blue from whom I asked for help. He answered me Shirts from London who went to fight Franco, very promptly and in the following years he and encouraged me to raise the profile of the explored all the possible sources of information volunteers from Israel (Palestine Mandate), who and kept me in touch. went in greater numbers than any other nation I only met him a few times, always at the when calculated as a percentage of annual memorial event in Jubilee Gardens in populations. I will greatly miss his loyal and London, but he always remembered me and friendly chats with me. always asked if I had heard any news of ‘Samuel’ I was also inspired by another of your items (I and the family knew him as Uncle Eddy). It (issue 2-2016) on Zuza Ziólkowska Hercberg of seemed to me that we had always known each Poland, who recently led a group (shown in your other – he was so friendly and interested. magnificent cover photo), carrying the Botwin Jim must have been like this with all the people Rene González, and Gerardo Hernández, with (Polish Jewish) Company banner at a wreath- who asked for his help and I guess as his health members of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign and laying in Warsaw. Her apparent re- discovery of deteriorated he was finding it all the more difficult the Cuban ambassador. The picture above is of her Jewish roots via her grandfather’s service to read information from the Moscow archives, Rene and Gerardo holding that flag in the Nalgo with the Botwins was very moving to read, and but he still carried on cheerfully to the end. Room of the library on the day of their visit. fairly common now as many ‘Catholic’ Poles Brian Walsh Stuart Walsh discover their families were in fact Jews. How By email By email

16 International Brigade Memorial Trust PROFILE

Rosemary Bailey’s ‘Love and War in the Pyrenees: A Story of Courage, Fear and Hope, 1939-1944’ was published in 2009, since when she and others have pieced together the story of Mary Elmes.

Left: Mary Elmes (on right) in Spain during the civil war. helped save many hundreds of people incarcerated in the concentration camps of southern France, especially children, from death and deportation. Mary died in 2002 and her children received the award on her behalf in the seaside town of Canet-sur-Mer, near Mary Elmes Perpignan, on the Mediterranean coast – where once Spanish Republican refugees were huddled in ramshackle camps on the beaches. Saving lives and One of the children she rescued, Ron Friend, now a psychology professor in the United States, was at the ceremony. He had been rescued as two-year-old René Freund from the camp, given up by his parents. His father ended up in Auschwitz. As a result of reading my shunning glory book he discovered that Mary Elmes was his rescuer and proposed her for this award. When researching my book, the references to Mary Elmes were few Award-winning writer and novelist and it was tantalising to know so little of this heroic woman. Then, listening to a history guide at the camp at Rivesaltes one day, an elderly ROSEMARY BAILEY tells the story lady piped up to ask about the work of the Quakers. She told me later that she was the daughter of Mary Elmes, but that her mother had of the Irish-born Quaker nurse who never told her anything of those times – so many people wanted to forget, and some – especially women – felt no desire for recognition. cared for refugee children in Spain They simply did what had to be done. Perhaps also, when the awful truth about the extermination camps was confirmed when they were during the civil war and continued liberated in 1945, they felt that what they had done was not enough. After ‘Love and War in the Pyrenees’ was published I have heard from her work in France during the so many people, writing letters, sending emails via my website, even Second World War. turning up at the door. Researching With the help of 78-year-old Quaker Bernard Wilson, who had a hen I wrote about Mary Elmes and the work of the Quakers in house in the region, we began researching the Quaker history in southern France in ‘Love and War in the Pyrenees’ I little southern France. Bernard’s research has uncovered a vast cache of Wknew how the story would unfold. However, as a result of my material, in particular the records of Quaker activities now held by the book, in June 2014 she was awarded Israel’s honour of ‘Righteous American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in Philadelphia. He and Among the Nations’. This is given to non-Jews – most famously Oskar Ron Friend tracked down Mary’s daughter, Caroline Danjou, to a small Schindler – who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews seaside town, St Marie-de-la-Mer, in the Pyrénées-Orientales and he from extermination. began to piece together the full story of Mary’s life. Bernard Wilson For nearly 10 years between 1937 and 1945, Mary Elmes worked as a has now written a book for children inspired by his research (see relief worker for the British and American Quakers in war-torn Spain http://campsofshame.webplus.net). and France. She never talked afterwards about what she did, but she Continued overleaf

IBMT Magazine 1-2017 17

Mary Elmes d She remained d incarcerated for nearly After two years on the six months… Mary front line in Spain she refused to accept the escaped with the last of salary which had accrued the Republican refugees while she was in prison, to France, where another and likewise the Légion tragedy was about to d’Honneur later offered by unfold. the French government.

From previous page was occupied by the Germans in 1940, the British Quakers had to Mary Elmes, a young Irishwoman born in Cork in 1908, had left Ireland leave. Mary, as an Irish neutral, was able to stay on. She ran the Quaker after studying languages at Trinity College, Dublin, and headed for relief operation from Perpignan for the next five years, working in the London with a scholarship to the London School of Economics. She then concentration camps, supplying much needed food and clothing, and went to study in Geneva, where she became involved with the Quakers. struggling for the release of desperate internees. She went with them on a five-day mercy mission to Spain, via She paid regular visits to the camps, both those on the beaches and Gibraltar, in 1937. But Mary was determined to stay on and help and the notorious camp at Rivesaltes near Perpignan, stretched out over a hooked up with Sir George Young and the London University Ambulance bleak open plain, over-run with rats and lice. Internees suffered from Unit. It was the beginning of the rest of her life. malnutrition, and the bitter wind of winter and the scorching heat of Mary ran a children’s hospital in Alicante, but when the bombing summer made living there intolerable. Mary was particularly became too heavy she took the children to safety in a small mountain concerned with the children in the camps, malnourished babies and village. Even when her father died in Ireland in 1938 and her mother pathetic orphans left behind when their parents were deported. (The begged her to return home, she insisted on remaining with the children, parents were given the choice of leaving them behind, causing heart- unable to find anyone to replace her. rending scenes which Mary describes in her letters.) Many were After two years on the front line in Spain she escaped with the last of rescued, sometimes smuggled out and taken to children’s colonies in the Republican refugees to France, where another tragedy was about remote chateaux in the Pyrenees. to unfold. Half a million Spanish men, women and children had When the deportations of Jews began from the south in 1942 the struggled across the Pyrenees into France, bombed and machine- Quakers were often the only relief organisation permitted to provide gunned by planes, while enduring the hardships of the terrain and food and water for the convoys of wagons. Even the children’s colonies freezing winter weather. were not safe; children had to be spirited away and hidden in more isolated places. Mary concealed some children in the boot of her car Barbed wire and drove them high into the Pyrenees. The French response was to section off areas of the Mediterranean When the Germans invaded the southern zone in 1942, Mary was beaches with barbed wire, and to enclose the refugees between the arrested on suspicion of spying and aiding escapees – though it seems wire and the sea. They had to scoop depressions in the sand for shelter. it was her aid to the Jews that really caused the trouble. She hid papers There were no toilets, they had to use the sea. Drinking water was which would have incriminated her in her bathroom, but eventually she pumped up from underground but rapidly became polluted, bread was was arrested and taken to Toulouse and then imprisoned in the tossed over the wire leaving the refugees to fight for food. The French notorious Paris prison of Fresnes. Her mother and her colleagues authorities hoped that their unwelcome guests would return to Spain – agitated for her release, appealing to the Irish ambassador in Vichy, some did, but most refused knowing what fate might await them there. sending food parcels – cooked potatoes and well wrapped hard boiled Mary realised that, if these camps were to remain for any length of eggs recommended – but Mary remained incarcerated for nearly six time, there was a need for schooling, for reading matter for children months before being released. Then she returned to work, as brisk and and adults, for the means to occupy their time and provide some kind spruce as ever. ‘We all suffered inconveniences in those days, didn’t of purpose to their existence. In July 1939 she was appointed by the we?’ she said. Mary refused to accept the salary which had accrued AFSC for cultural work in the camps. She saw the need for books in while she was in prison, and likewise the Légion d’Honneur later Spanish, and went to Paris to buy books for the libraries she was soon offered by the French government. to open. She became a familiar figure in the camps; thousands knew her as ‘Miss Mary’ and turned to her for solutions to their problems. Never talked The work with the refugees was supported by the great cellist Pablo After the war she married a Frenchman, a local forestry engineer, and Casals, who had also taken refuge in the region – the Spanish fascists stayed in southern France for the rest of her life. She never talked said they would break his arms if they ever caught him. about her experiences and it is only since her death that the extent of But things were to become worse still. With the outbreak of world her work and sacrifice has begun to be appreciated. She died on war in September of 1939, German refugees who had sought shelter in 9 March 2002, aged 94. France were immediately rounded up as enemy aliens, many of them A journalist wrote of her in 1947: ‘Tirelessly, with courage and ending up in the already overcrowded camps on the Spanish border. simplicity, she brought to the most deprived the food and clothing The following year, with the German invasion of the Low Countries and which prolonged their lives and the hope of survival. Her confident, finally France itself, another tide of refugees poured into the region. affectionate and smiling presence kept the memory of happiness and Now everyone was short of food. Mary and her colleagues in liberty alive.’ Perpignan opened canteens, provided meals in schools throughout
the region, while still continuing the work in the camps. When France See: [www.rosemarybailey.com].

18 International Brigade Memorial Trust FROM SOHO TO SPAIN S A V C I A Italians against fascism: the London connection

By Alfio Bernabei Above: Carlo Rosselli and Piero Jacchia (on right) at Monte Pelado, near Huesca. he organised prelude to the Italian partisan resistance against Nazi- fascism that developed within Italy in 1943-44 actually started in T Spain in 1936. It began with the first contingent of Italians joining the International Brigades. It was made up of political exiles who had escaped from fascist persecution and taken refuge abroad, including Britain. These exiles started to arrive in Spain in August 1936, around 150 men, forming the ‘Italian Column’. They entered into combat against the Nationalists for the first time later that month in Monte Pelado. The Italian Column had been formed by three political refugees: Carlo Rosselli, Camillo Berneri and Mario Angeloni. The latter died in that first battle. Rosselli, the socialist leader, took command and launched the slogan ‘Spain today, Italy tomorrow’ in a rousing speech from Radio Below: Jacchia’s obituary on the front page of Giustizia e Libertà (right). Barcelona that reverberates to the present day. Rosselli was one of the founders of Giustizia e Libertà, the anti-fascist Paris-based organisation, and a well-known figure in London, with friends in the Labour Party and among Italian anti-fascists active in and around Soho. These were a motley group that had actively attacked fascism since its inception and had been formed notably by doctor Francesco Galasso, who had a surgery in Frith Street, Emidio Recchioni, who owned the King Bomba shop in Old Compton Street, Vittorio Taborelli, who ran a café in the same street, and Decio Anzani, who had a tailor’s workshop near Oxford Street. But it was Piero Jacchia, a teacher, poet and familiar presence at the British Library, who immediately responded to Rosselli’s appeal and joined the Italian Column. We know of him because his letters found their way to the pages of New Times and Ethiopian News , the newspaper started in May 1936 by Sylvia Pankhurst and her Italian companion Silvio Corio, initially launched to condemn Mussolini’s aggression against Ethiopia but soon to become an important source of information on the Spanish Civil War.

acchia’s correspondence starts with a letter dated 7 September 1936 upon his arrival in Barcelona. ‘We were called for instruction with Jthe machine-gun, which arrived an hour later than the equipment. All is not yet completed, but it seems pretty sure that we are leaving today,’ he wrote. Jacchia describes the morale of his comrades as being excellent, with ‘the greatest fellowship and solidarity among us’. He is eager to fight and feeling fit: ‘Health fine, aged 20 years!’ He is in fact a frail 51 years old, born in Trieste, where he had studied to become a teacher. A fervent fascist at first, he understood his mistake after Mussolini’s March on Rome and turned against the regime so forcefully that he had to flee the Left: Francesco country to avoid prison. Galasso (centre) On 13 September Jacchia enters the combat zone near Huesca. ‘In in London with Grañén we had the first salute of the Fascist guns. They fired on the fellow Italian English ambulance, the one whose organisation was decided at the anti-fascists. Continued overleaf

IBMT Magazine 1-2017 19 FROM SOHO TO SPAIN SECOND WORLD WAR

From previous page meeting at the Friends House, which I attended. I spoke to the chief in Many exiles joined the Maquis or Grañén to where they had retreated. They had some wounded. The place we are at is fired at every morning by the Fascist batteries.’ British and Free French armies, On 23 September, from the Huesca front, he explains: ‘My functions are more or less those of an officer, but without any real title, but under an equalitarian regime the officer has also to do the menial work, while others ran escape routes for digging and cleaning, the same as the others.’ On 18 October he writes

from a hospital bed in Barcelona, where he is recovering from a wound, Allied servicemen d Jacchia remarks: ‘The spirit of By Geoff Cowling n January 1939 up to 500,000 Spanish Republican refugees fled the International Brigades is across the Pyrenees into France in atrocious weather. Many simply splendid. We are Imanaged to flee further and today they form the Catalan and Spanish diaspora in Mexico and Argentina. Those who stayed in France perfectly and unshakably faced an uncertain future when the conflict in Spain spread to the rest of Europe and France itself was occupied by Hitler’s troops – blitzkrieged certain of final victory.’ by the Luftwaffe, whose pilots had honed their tactics against the Spanish Republic. disgusted at Britain’s so-called neutral stance. ‘Mr Eden’s speech is France established camps for refugees in Rivesaltes and Argelès. hopeless. The entire British attitude most deplorable and dangerous. Conditions were appalling; 15,000 died. Once France was fully Your politics have never been worse nor less dignified but it is useless to occupied, 2,000 Spanish Jews were taken, many by the Vichy police and get angry and to complain.’ handed to the Germans for extermination in Auschwitz. Other Spaniards Still convalescing in Barcelona on 31 October, Jacchia notes: ‘Things were used as forced labour in German factories. An unknown number lie are going much better now. One is beginning to see the effect of the help in British soil – they died building the extensive coastal fortifications still from Russia. We are again on the offensive and the spirit is very high.’ He to be seen in the Channel Islands. Thousands more perished in returns to the Huesca front and later joins the stronger Italian Garibaldi Mauthausen concentration camp. Battalion, commanded by Randolfo Pacciardi. On 15 December he is in But not all were subjugated. Remnants of the Spanish Republican Madrid and five days later at El Pardo, where he remarks: ‘The spirit of Army infiltrated into the French Pyrenees where they formed the the International Brigades is simply splendid. We are perfectly and backbone of the Maquis – referred to by Professor Paul Preston as the unshakably certain of final victory.’ A month later, on 14 January 1937, he ‘Spanish Republican Army on tour’. Armed by the British SOE, they is killed in Majadahonda. operated as far north as the Dordogne. They were not always popular The setback of that January is serious, but of course the struggle with French civilians. The Maquis would attack German troops, for continues. The number of Italians with the International Brigades keeps example at the Col de Rille above Saint-Girons in August 1944, but the rising. It is a kind of civil war between Italians that develops because Germans took savage reprisals, devastating nearby Rimont and Mussolini, who has given his support to Franco from day one of the coup, slaughtering its inhabitants. The Spanish Maquis led by Commander keeps sending men, reaching an estimated 50,000 in total. The dictator ‘Robert’ went on to capture the strategic Pyrenean town of Foix before also keeps sending planes and submarines, letting the British know that handing it over to the French Resistance. not a single Blackshirt would withdraw before obtaining complete victory. Others served further afield. Many were recruited into the French Foreign Legion in 1939. On the collapse of France some made it to the UK ecent studies put the number of Italians who joined the where they were incorporated into the Free French and British armies International Brigades at between 4,000 and 5,000 – a relatively and went on to serve as commandos in Narvik, Crete and North Africa. A Rlarge number considering the particular dilemma they were substantial proportion of the troops and tank crews of General Leclerc’s facing. Unlike the vast majority of those taking part from the other 2nd Armoured Division which liberated Paris in August 1944 were estimated 52 nations, they had no prospect of returning home while Spanish Republicans. Their tanks bore the names Ebro, Teruel, Belchite, fascism lasted. They also knew their decision to go to Spain would put Madrid and Guadalajara. They went on to take part in the liberation of their families and friends under scrutiny and at risk, with likely Strasbourg and the Battle for Germany itself. Few survived. retaliations. Worse things could happen. To give an example to all, Mussolini had Rosselli assassinated by fascists with his brother, Nello, in France in 1937. Indeed, after 1938, when the time came to leave Spain, many Italians who had joined the International Brigades remained abroad, including a contingent that arrived in London. They headed for Soho, where they found organised assistance: Galasso provided lodgings and lawyers, Vero Recchioni and Taborelli food, while Anzani helped with papers to enable them to move elsewhere. Jacchia was never forgotten. His name made it into the ‘Italy tomorrow’ prefigured by Rosselli. On 30 April 1944 a partisan brigade was formed in Castel San Pietro Terme, near Bologna, in central Italy, and Jacchia’s cousin, Mario, gave it a familiar name: ‘66 Brigata Garibaldi Piero Jacchia ’.

Alfio Bernabei is a London-based Italian journalist.

20 International Brigade Memorial Trust SECOND WORLD WAR

consulates in Bilbao and Barcelona. The Generalitat has marked the end of the symbolic Cami de la Libertat from Saint-Girons in the Ariège across The Spanish the Pyrenees to Esterri d’Aneu in Catalonia to commemorate the Pat O’Leary escape line. Among the many who took the route over the eastern Pyrenees were the two surviving Cockleshell heroes, Blondie Hasler and Bill Sparks. Airey Republicans Neave, who escaped from Colditz and went on to be Margaret Thatcher’s right-hand man, was taken over the Pyrenees and onto the British consulate in Barcelona by the Catalan escape network led by Francisco who kept on Poznán Vidal. Executed by the Germans in August 1944, Poznán received a posthumous commendation from King George VI in 1948 – not bad for a Republican anarchist.

fighting imilar commemorative work has been done in the Basque Country to mark the Comete Line, which often ended at the seamen’s mission in Spanish Republicans contributed to the Allied victory in other ways. The SSan Sebastián and was run over the Pyrenees by the redoubtable work of double agent Joan Pujol García, known to the British as ‘Garbo’ Florentino Giocoechea, also decorated by George VI. On arrival, evaders and to the Germans as ‘Arabel’, was acknowledged by General where usually handed over to the British consul in Bilbao and passed on to Eisenhower as decisive to the success of the D-Day landings. Initially the embassy in Madrid and on to Gibraltar. The escape lines across the ‘handled’ by Tommy Harris of MI6, Garbo persuaded the Germans, via a Pyrenees were financed by MI9 and coordinated by Donald Darling, network of 28 fictitious agents, that Normandy was merely a diversion, operating variously from Madrid, Barcelona, Lisbon and Gibraltar. that the main Allied force would invade the Pas-de-Calais. As a result, the While HM Consul General in Barcelona I shall never forget being Germans kept substantial armour in Calais for two months after D-Day. For challenged at a seminar by a student demanding to know: ‘Why did the this key deception Garbo was later awarded the MBE by the Duke of Allies, who professed to rid Europe from fascism, stop their tanks in the Edinburgh in London’s Special Forces Club. The Germans had previously Pyrenees in 1945 and allowed Spain to fester under Franco’s dictatorship awarded him the Iron Cross. for a further 30 years?’ Many others helped Allied servicemen to cross the Pyrenees from It was an uncomfortable question – and the answer was that Spain was occupied France to Spain, where they made contact with the British neutral and stayed out of the Second World War. But we should never forget that many unknown Spaniards played their individual part to help Left: Allied troops liberating Mauthausen concentration camp in May 1945 are the Allied effort and paid the ultimate price – for that we should be greeted by Spanish Republicans. grateful.
Top: Spanish Republicans in the Free French Army being welcomed in Paris in 1944 following the expulsion of the Nazis from the city. Geoff Cowling is an ex IBMT Trustee and British Consul General in Barcelona from 2002-2005.

IBMT Magazine 1-2017 21 EASTERN EUROPE Snapshot of the Hungarian volunteers While living in Hungary in the 1990s, IBMT member government, officially, played no role in this. Many of them received a pension from Franco’s Spanish government and some stayed in Spain. JOHN CUNNINGHAM got to know Iván Harsányi, A small group of Hungarians fought in the Spanish Republican secretary of the Hungarian Spanish Civil War veterans’ Army. association. On 3 March 1995 he sat down and interviewed Initially there was no specifically Hungarian unit until the formation Iván in Budapest and made notes of their conversation. of the Mátyás Rákosi Battalion in 1937. In autumn 1957 the remaining The notes were stowed away and eventually forgotten Hungarian veterans dropped the name. about – until last year when John rediscovered them inside n all, 260 Hungarians died in Spain, many of these at the Battle of a book. This is what they reveal… Huesca. General Zalka, the highly respected commander of the Ibattalion (pseudonym Lukács, in some literature Lukácz), died at ine hundred and sixty-five Hungarians fought in Spain on the Huesca. His remains were buried in an unmarked grave near Republican side. This figure has been computed from Barcelona and returned to Hungary in 1970 on the initiative of his NComintern (Communist International) sources, the French family – the Hungarian government had little or no contact with the Intelligence Service and from the veterans’ own compilation of Franco regime. statistics. After the civil war was over many of the remaining Hungarians were Interestingly only 130-150 claimed Hungary as their home. The interned in France and after the fall of France in the Second World War majority of the Hungarian volunteers came from the various émigré the Vichy government put them in prison camps; some were sent to communities around the world. Exact figures are not available but it is Germany and North Africa as forced labour. Some of the latter escaped estimated that 33 per cent lived in France at the time they enlisted. A and joined the French Foreign Legion or were liberated by the British number of these were miners, as were a group from Belgium. The US and went on to fight in the British Army. and Canada were also home to a number of volunteers. After the war all the veterans tried to get back to Hungary but those who had spent time in the West were under suspicion and 30-35 were In 1958 the Hungarian Partisan Alliance conducted a survey of imprisoned, while László Rajk and others were executed. International Brigade volunteers with the following results: On the 50th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War in 1986, 156 veterans were still alive. G Political affiliation Administrative (‘white collar’)
Communist Party: 55 per cent workers: 11 per cent Non-affiliated: 39 per cent G Age profile Social Democrats: 5 per cent 50+: 2 per cent Other parties: 1 per cent 40-50: 10 per cent G Class make-up 30-40: 37 per cent Workers: 57 per cent 25-30: 27 per cent Intellectuals: 17 per cent 20-25: 20 per cent Peasants: 15 per cent 20 (and below): 4 per cent

Much of this diaspora was once called the ‘left emigration’ caused by the collapse of the Workers’ Council Revolution in 1919 and the subsequent persecution of leftists by successive right-wing governments. The deterioration in the economic situation, which hit Hungary very badly, only contributed to this migration. In Hungary, left social democrats and the communist youth organised an aid movement to help the Spanish Republic and in the first months of its operation this was legal. The Hungarian government later took a harder line, apparently because the Hungarian newspaper Népszava (People’s Voice) published two congratulatory telegrams on the formation of the Caballero government in 1936. The paper also published interviews with Spanish communists, social democrats and Catalan nationalists (but not with the POUM or the anarchists). This must have displeased the authorities as they threatened to close the paper down. Népszava was a paper generally associated with the social democrats. The Hungarian Communist Party was outlawed and could only operate clandestinely. It is estimated that more than 100 Hungarians fought on the Franco side; some were pilots and technical experts. The Hungarian

STANDING ON GUARD: Memorial (right) to the International Brigades in Budapest’s Memento Park, a space dedicated to monuments and plaques from Hungary’s communist period from 1949 to 1989.

22 y r a r b i L

l a i r o m e M

x r a M

Americans at war RICHARD BAXELL reviews a new book that elegantly retells the story of how the Spanish Civil War agonised and mobilised a generation in the US and beyond.

Above: Members of the infantry company of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion in Spain in 1937. They include Jack Hedley (back row, second from right), from Liverpool, and Frank Tierney (second from left), from Belfast.

‘Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936- Rodríguez. Britain may have been the main guilty party, but other Western 1939’ by Adam Hochschild (London: Macmillan, 2016) £25 democracies also bear culpability for the Republic’s defeat, including the (hardback); £15.99 (ebook) United States. As a new book by the award-winning author Adam Hochschild reminds us, President Franklin D Roosevelt came to much the t is now 80 years since the failed military coup which marked the same conclusion in January 1939, admitting to a cabinet meeting that the beginning of the civil war in Spain. During the bitter conflict some half a embargo on arms for the Spanish Republic had been a ‘grave mistake’. Imillion Spaniards were killed, a sombre warning of the greater Hochschild’s ‘Spain in Our Hearts’ is subtitled ‘Americans in the slaughter to follow. For while the civil war was at its heart a Spanish Spanish Civil War’, though the book is not, in fact, about the 2,800 tragedy, the internationalism of the war conferred on it a lasting American volunteers in the International Brigades. Instead, his account is significance beyond the Iberian peninsula . told through the experiences of a select number of individuals (not all of Crucial military support from Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany for whom are American) within the cataclysmic war in Spain. And they are Franco’s Nacionales was countered – to some degree – by that from select, for Hochschild’s characters are all highly-educated, middle-class Stalin’s Russia for the Republic. Meanwhile, the Western democracies did writers. The notion of a poets’ (or writers’) war is clearly still attractive to their upmost to ‘keep out of it’, making ineffectual efforts to encourage writers and publishers, which neither time nor the undoubted presence of other regimes to do the same. The ‘non-intervention agreement’ (as it was an overwhelming proportion of manual workers among the volunteers called) was therefore not akin to neutrality and decisively helped the seems to have dispelled. Nacionad les , later acknowledged by the Francoist minister Pedro de Sáinz Admittedly, the author has chosen his stellar cast shrewdly, including the two most famous writers of the civil war (in English at least), Ernest The admission… that Franco Hemingway and George Orwell. While Hochschild seems to have little new to say about the latter, his account of Hemingway’s participation in a could not have won the war guerrilla raid behind enemy lines, which clearly inspired Robert Jordan’s mission in ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’, may come as a revelation to some without US trucks and US oil readers. Jordan’s real-life counterpart, the professor of economics and Abraham Lincoln Battalion commander Robert Hale Merriman, also credits reveals just how features, as does society debutante and reporter Virginia Cowles and significant this contribution journalist and International Brigader Louis Fischer. Accounts of the war’s impact on the characters’ personal relationships really was. Continued overleaf

IBMT Magazine 1-2017 23 BOOKS ETC Americans at war From previous page are a recurring theme; Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn obviously, but also Bob Merriman and his wife Marion, POUM supporters Lois and Charles Orr and the cross-Atlantic war romance between American nurse Toby Jensky and English sculptor and International Brigader Jason ‘Pat’ Gurney, who had suffered a nervous breakdown after the appalling carnage of the Jarama battle of 12-14 February 1937. Gurney’s account of the war, like Hemingway’s and Orwell’s, has been frequently cited and retold and it’s difficult to find much within Hochschild’s account that is strikingly original. Certainly the author’s debt to earlier studies, particularly those of Paul Preston and Peter Carroll (which he generously acknowledges) is clear. So, why then, should this new book be of interest? Principally, it is because of the sheer quality of the writing and story-telling. ‘Spain in Our Hearts’ is a rewarding and enjoyable read, for the elegant prose is littered with some Above: Guernica following its of the most telling anecdotes from the literature. destruction by German and Italian It is also a pretty fair and balanced account. The author is fortunately bombers during Franco’s offensive too sophisticated to fall for the simplistic, binary notion of a war between against the Basque Country in the two equally repugnant totalitarian philosophies, in which Spain is spring of 1937. merely a passive bystander. Left: Jesús Iguarán Aramburu, one of the Nor does he make the mistake of seeing Republican Spain as a niños vascos(Basque children), who satellite state of the Soviet Union, though not denying that the supplies was ‘adopted’ by the Simmons family of military materiel and the organisation of the International Brigades while in Britain. gave Stalin great influence. This ‘devil’s pact’ was really the only option Below: With nearly 4,000 refugee left to the Republic, once the Western democracies had refused to come children on board, the Habana prepares to leave Bilbao for to Spain’s aid. Southampton in May 1937. ochschild will, no doubt, come into some criticism for justifying what has become seen as ‘the communist line’ regarding the Hargument over ‘war or revolution first’ that Orwell discusses in detail in ‘Homage to Catalonia’. Yet it is often forgotten that after the war Orwell himself came to the reluctant conclusion that the military necessities of the war should take precedence, though he nevertheless remained furious about the Communist Party’s use of the argument as a smokescreen for the suppression of other parties of the left. Like Orwell, Hochschild clearly has great sympathy for the POUMistas and anarchists, yet he is not dewy-eyed, dryly observing that ‘the ideal of “from each according to his abilities, to each according to their needs”, however splendid in theory, proved hard to enforce, especially when many workers felt that what they needed was more time off’. Balanced, of course, is not the same as neutral and Hochschild’s Republican sympathies are plain to see (and why not?). Perhaps the clearest example is his illuminating account of the role of Torkild Rieber, the pro-Nazi CEO of the American oil company Texaco, in supplying millions of gallons of oil to Franco on credit. To this can be added the 12,000 trucks received by Franco from General Motors, Studebaker and Ford. As Hochschild points out, the admission by the undersecretary of the Spanish foreign ministry that Franco could not have won the war without US trucks and US oil credits reveals just how significant this contribution really was to the Nationalists’ cause. Hochschild’s ‘Spain in Our Hearts’ is much more than just another account of Orwell and Hemingway in Spain. It offers the reader a window into the personal, emotionally searing experiences of those who decided to make the Spanish cause their own. As Albert Camus, from whom the book’s title is drawn, wrote just after the end of the war, ‘it was in Spain that [my generation] learned that one can be right and yet be beaten’. Hochschild’s beautifully crafted book explains why, for them, the Spanish drama was and remained a personal tragedy.

Historian Richard Baxell is one of the two main speakers at this year’s IBMT Len Crome Memorial Conference on 18 March (see inside front cover). This review first appeared in the December 2016 issue of The Volunteer .

24 International Brigade Memorial Trust K Right: Jessie Simmons (née Branch) with U n

o a group of Basque refugee children at an i t a i unknown location in 1937. c o s s A

7 3 ’ f o n e r d l i h C e u q s a B / a g a x t As we approach the 80th u r r u

G anniversary of the o n i t

s bombing of Guernica u a F on 26 April 193 7, JOHN SIMMONS explains how his family’s involvement with the Basque refugee children who came to Britain inspired him to write a novel with the Spanish Civil War as its backdrop. A novel inspired by my parents’ involvement in

K the aftermath of the bombing of Guernica U n o i t a ime marches on even if the members of the town of Hendaye that played a significant role in events during the war. i c o s International Brigades no longer can. We’re Digging deeper into my own family history for the novel’s s A

7 losing those with personal memories of background, I discovered what I had always been too vaguely aware 3 ’

f T living at that time, so it makes anniversaries of. My parents, Jessie and Frank Simmons, had been fighters against o n e r even more important. Eightieth anniversaries fascism in 1930s Britain – present at Cable Street, campaigning for d l i h come at us fast: the start of the Spanish Civil War the Spanish Republican cause and ‘adopting’ a boy called Jesús, C e

u last July, the bombing of Guernica just ahead. whose existence I knew of only through photographs in an old family q s a And, less well-known but important to me and album; because, unfortunately, my mum and dad died in the 1960s B my family, the 80th anniversary of the arrival of and, as a teenager then, I had failed to ask all the questions I wanted the Habana in May 1937, the ship carrying nearly answered now. 4,000 children from Bilbao in the Basque region to a refugee camp at I did eventually track down more details of the Spanish boy Jesús, Stoneham, near Southampton. thanks to the Basque Children of ’37 Association UK. They gave me his All this has been brought vividly to life for me by the research and full name – Jesús Iguarán Aramburu – and the date of his return to Bilbao writing of a novel called ‘Spanish Crossings’. I wrote it by drawing on in January 1938. There the trail ended – I presume, after all these years, aspects of my family history. But of course it is fiction, and increasingly that he is now dead. we need to keep stories of that time alive by use of the imagination, not just the naturally diminishing memories of those who were there. n my family we still have a precious memento of that time – a child’s ‘Spanish Crossings’ is the story of a young woman, Lorna Starling, desk made by Jesús’s father to say thank you to my mum and dad. who is making her way in London in 1937 at the novel’s opening. The law IThe desk was used by my brother, then by me when Dave died, then firm where she works in an administrative role supports trade union and by my son and now by my grandchildren. left-wing causes, and Lorna is assigned to work with the committee that The desk is a constant reminder to my family of the extraordinary takes responsibility for the child refugees. She meets Harry James, an dedication of ordinary people at that time to resist fascism. The novel International Brigader who has returned briefly from the war. They ‘Spanish Crossings’ now provides another way of keeping those embark on an affair before Harry has to return to the war. He leaves a memories alive. It comes at a time when we need to be more aware letter with an eye-witness account of Guernica. than ever of the historical lessons that should be drawn from that Lorna waits anxiously for news until the worst news arrives – Harry turbulent period. has been killed in action in Spain. Lorna rededicates herself to the cause
of the Basque children, ‘adopting’ one of them, Pepe. The rest of the ‘Spanish Crossings’ (£12.99) is available to order from the Urbane website (http:// novel – its second part in 1943, third part in 1947 – keeps the situation in urbanepublications.com/books/spanish-crossings) and bookshops. It will be Spain pivotal to the narrative. The novel’s climax is at the French border published in April, the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Guernica.

IBMT Magazine 1-2017 25 BOOKS ETC Revision guide’s textbook case of bad history chool textbook publisher Hodder Education has agreed to look again at the description of the Spanish Civil War given in one of its Spanish Civil War was a conflict between Spopular GCSE revision guides. This follows a complaint by the IBMT, which said a passage on the ‘communists and right wing rebels’ war in Spain in ‘OCR GCSE Modern World History’, by Ben Walsh, was Under the heading ‘Spanish Civil War’, the revision textbook ‘a throw-back to the days of the Franco dictatorship and the Cold War, ‘OCR GCSE Modern World History’ states: ‘In 1936 a civil war when the Franco regime cynically misrepresented the civil war as a broke out in Spain between Communists, who were supporters “crusade against communism” in order both to find favour with the of the Republican government, and right wing rebels under Western democracies and to distance itself from its fascist past’. General Franco. Hitler saw this as an opportunity to fight against In an exchange of emails in September last year, Jim Belben, a communism and at the same time to try out his new armed consultant publisher with Hodder Education, told the IBMT that the forces. In 1937, as the League of Nations looked on helplessly, feedback received was ‘very helpful’. German aircraft made devastating bombing raids on civilian He added: ‘We endeavour to ensure our books are accurate and that populations in various Spanish cities. The destruction of they remain in touch with developments in scholarship. I have shared Guernica was terrible. The world looked on in horror at the your email with the author and we are suffering that modern weapons could cause.’ going to do all we can to make sure that the points you make are reflected in future editions.’ attempted coup – at a time when the Soviet Union did not even have an Manchester-based member Stuart embassy in Spain and before the Spanish Communist Party emerged as Walsh alerted the IBMT to the content of a major political force. Indeed, Stalin did not agree to sell arms to the the book, which was published in 2009, Republic until after Hitler and Mussolini had intervened in the conflict. saying: ‘It seems extraordinary that such As for Hitler’s real motives, Jump’s letter went on: ‘On the other hand, a misleading statement has been made.’ there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the fascist dictators In his protest to Hodder Education, understood that, with Franco’s victory, another fascist state on the IBMT Secretary Jim Jump challenged the borders of France would weaken France and the Western powers.’ notion that a war had ‘broken out’ and that it had been between communists and Franco. ‘There was a military Prisoner rebellion against Spain’s elected government,’ he wrote. ‘It was put Meanwhile, the League of Nations did not ‘look on helplessly’, but down in most big cities by forces loyal to the government aided by was instead a prisoner of the policy of ‘non-intervention’ being hastily assembled militias attached to trade unions and left-wing pursued by Britain and France – which meant that the Spanish political parties. The Spanish Communist Party was a very small party government could not purchase arms to defend itself. at the time. Its influence did grow during the civil war because of its ‘Non-intervention’, the IBMT explained, was the practical commitment to the war effort and the help given to the Republic by the implementation of the wider British policy of appeasement towards Soviet Union. But at no stage was the party the dominant force in the the fascist powers, a policy informed by a desire to stay out of another government of the Spanish Republic, whose last prime minister was a European war combined with covert sympathies for the fascist socialist, Juan Negrín.’ dictators and their hostility towards the Soviet Union. Equally, Jump’s letter added, it was misleading to say that Hitler saw
the rebellion as an opportunity to fight communism. Hitler had decided Send the IBMT any examples you find of questionable accounts of the Spanish Civil War to give military assistance to the rebels from the outset of their in school textbooks. Get on the emailing list for the IBMT eNewsletter Give us your email address (we won’t pass it on to anyone else) and we’ll send you our regular e-newsletter, with all the latest news plus information about for th coming events. Contact: [ad min@international- brigades.org.uk]. IBMT merchandise Proceeds help fund the commemorative, educational and publicity work of the trust

70th anniversary trinket box Made from finest bone china in the UK. On the lid is the three-pointed International Brigade star. Inside is an extract from La Pasionaria’s farewell speech to the International Brigades in October 1938. CD single Brigadista ale t-shirt £10 plu¡sN £o2 P.a9s9a prá&np ! bag Exclusively for the IBMT, Billy Bragg Advertises the commemorative ale performs ‘Jarama Valley’ and Ethically sourced jute bag (30cms square, promoting the IBMT for the 80th 18cms across). One side printed, other Maxine Peake delivers Dolores anniversary of the formation of the Ibárruri’s (La Pasionaria’s) emotional blank. Robust bag, useful for any International Brigades. Ethically sourced shopping trip and a great way to show farewell speech to the International bottle green (pictured) or black cotton Brigades with a dub backing from support for anti-fascism and the IBMT. shirt produced by Hope Not Hate £4.99 plus £2.99 p&p The Urban Roots . exclusively for the IBMT. ‘International £5 plus £1.99 p&p Brigade Memorial Trust’ and International Brigade logo on sleeve. Please state colour preference when ordering. Friendship bracelet British Battalion t-shirt Available in: Woven friendship bracelet in Spanish In red or grey and made for the IBMT S (36inch/90cms chest) Republican colours. Handmade in by t-shirt specialists Philosophy M (40inch/100cms) the UK. Football from ethically sourced cotton. L (44inch/110cms) £2 plus £2.99 p&p British Battalion banner on front and XL (48inch/120cms) ‘International Brigade Memorial XXL (52inch/130cms) Trust’ on sleeve. Available in: £15 plus £4.99 p&p S (36inch/90cms chest) Clenched fist sculpture M (40inch/100cms) Life-sized sculpture in specially treated L (44inch/110cms) concrete. Based on the clenched fist XL (48inch/120cms) created by sculptor Betty Rae at the top XXL (52inch/130cms) of the pole for the original British Fitted women’s (34-36inch/70-90cms). Battalion banner. 23cms high. The £15 plus £3.99 p&p clenched fist was the iconic salute of the Antifascistas Popular Front and is still used by anti- British and Irish Volunteers in 70th anfansicvisetrss aaroryu ntad nthkea wrdorld. the Spanish Civil War Replica flag Made in£ 2th9.e9 U9 Kp lfuros m£7 .f9in9e ps&t pbone china. On the The story of the volunteers in words Reproduction of the British Battalion No.1 front of the tankard is the three-pointed and pictures, by Richard Baxell, Company flag named after Labour Party International Brigade star and on the reverse Angela Jackson and Jim Jump leader Clement Attlee. 150cms x 87cms. is a quotation from La Pasionaria’s farewell (paperback). Red background with dark gold lettering. speech to the International Brigades in £15 plus £2.99 p&p Ideal for carrying on marches or simply October 1938. putting on the wall. £7 plus £3.99 p&p £10 plus £4 p&p

15th International Brigade t-shirt In autumn 1937 each of the International Brigades was presented with a flag at the 75th anniversary poster Calderón Theatre in Madrid in a ceremony On A4 aIrBt MpaTp gerre aentdin sgpse ccaiarld ly designed for to celebrate the first anniversary of the the IBMMT ebays luearidnign agp gpraropxhiimc atretilsyt 1 M5camrt ix n formation of the International Brigades. Bedford10. cm, the IBMT greetings card This is a depiction of the flag of the mainly £5 plusf e£a1t.9u9re ps& ap drawing by Rafael Alberti English-speaking 15th International dedicated to the International Brigade, which included British, Irish, Brigades in 1996. Blank inside. American, Canadian and Commonwealth £5 for pack of 6 (including envelopes) Poems from Spain volunteers. Produced by Philosophy plus £1.99 p&p Collection of poems written by British Football from ethically sourced black cotton for the IBMT. ‘International Brigade and Irish International Brigaders. Volunteers for Liberty plate Edited by Jim Jump (paperback). Memorial Trust’ on sleeve. Available in: Highly decorative commemorative plate Send orders, including your name £10 plus £2.99 p&p S (36inch/90cms chest) made in Staffordshire by Heraldic Pottery and address, a size and colour M (40inch/100cms) exclusively for the IBMT. Fine bone china. where appropriate, and a cheque L (44inch/110cms) 1 10 ⁄2inch (265mm) diameter. Re-issue of payable to the IBMT to: IBMT XL (48inch/120cms) the much sought after 50th anniversary XXL (52inch/130cms) Merchandise, 37a Clerkenwell plate produced by International Brigade Green, London EC1R 0DU. Fitted women’s (34-36inch/70-90cms). veteran Lou Kenton. Includes mount for £15 plus £4.99 p&p wall display. £25 plus £6.99 p&p For multiple orders in the UK up to a value of £30 (excluding p&p) calculate total p&p by taking the highest p&p among items ordered, Tom Mann Centuria t-shirt halving the p&p of the remaining Made for the IBMT by t-shirt items and adding them together. specialists Philosophy Football from There is no p&p on orders for goods ethically sourced cotton. Tom Mann worth more than £30. Centuria banner on front. ‘International Brigade Memorial Connolly Column t-shirt IBMT badge For orders outside the UK or to pay Trust’ on sleeve. Available in S, M, L, Black cotton t-shirt with design Solid metal badge with International by credit card or PayPal, go to our XL, XXL and fitted women’s size (see (pictured) in Spanish Republican Brigade medal in centre and colours across chest commemorating website: [www.international- next t-shirt for size details). ‘International Brigade Memorial brigades.org.uk/merchandise.php] £13 plus £3.99 p&p the volunteers from Ireland. Available Trust’ around the edge. in S, M, L, XL. £3 plus £2.99 p&p where there are also other items £10 plus £3.99 p&p listed for sale .